Always a Bridesmaid
by Seaouryou
Summary: The receptionist took one look at them and asked, “Groom running away with the best man?” Kyle sputtered a negative, but Stan asked curiously, “Does that happen often?” She shrugged. “About as often as you’d think.”


This story takes place in a happy future world where gay marriage is legal.

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The first time Kyle got married - or, rather, it would be more appropriate to say "_attempted_ to get married" - it was a nice, proper Jewish wedding. Cartman was invited, but only because Stan and Kenny had promised to slip him horse tranquilizers before the ceremony began.

The bride-to-be was a nice, proper Jewish girl. She got along with her mother-in-law-to-be marvelously; in fact, she'd met Sheila before she'd met Kyle, at a hypertrichosis lanuginosa awareness rally, which they'd been holding so that the one person in a billion affected by this disease didn't have to hide in the woods of southwestern Canada, living in fear of paranoid Cryptozoologists and rabid tourists in floral-print shirts with cameras.

The day before the wedding, Megan - for that was her name - came to see him.

"Isn't it bad luck for me to see you beforehand?" Kyle asked, because he didn't actually know. She ignored his question (she had a tendency to do that) and led him to the living room, where she sat down on the couch and pulled her down next her, then clutched both of his hands in hers.

"Kyle," she said very seriously, "before I marry you, I have to know: are you only marrying me because your mother wants you to?"

"Well, yeah," Kyle said, tactful as ever.

She slapped him very hard, and then she left. A year and a half later, he got an invitation to the wedding of Megan and Kyle Schwartz. He jotted down 'Busy' on the back of the envelope and sent it back to New York.

Stan took him out drinking that night and spent the evening refilling his glass and assuring him Megan was an undeserving whore, and really, was there a better punishment than marrying his ultra-Jew cousin?

"But she _isn't_," Kyle finally said. "A whore, I mean. She was, like, just the opposite. We met when we were nineteen and we dated for three years, and she wouldn't sleep with me until we were engaged. And even _then_ it was like... we could only do it at night, in the dark, missionary style, and afterward she'd roll over and put on this terry cloth bathroom." Kyle went on to explain that the real problem with Megan was that she was just so terribly dull, and as someone born and raised in South Park, he just couldn't put up with dull.

"And now I'm twenty-four and I wasted five years on her and I'm going to die alone," Kyle moaned.

"Hey, it's not that bad," Stan said, slapping him on the back. "Look, if you still haven't tied the knot by the time you're forty, _I'll_ marry you," he joked.

"You should be careful with those drunken marriage proposals," Kyle said, joking as well.

--

Kyle's next steady girlfriend was most definitely not dull. Ashley was catholic, and had attended private school her entire life, and needless to say she was ready for some rebellion. Before she started dating Kyle she'd been living in a studio apartment with her punk rock girlfriend and worked as a stuntman to pay the bills.

She moved in almost immediately and was quite happy with living in sin, as her parents put it. Until one morning, that is, after nearly three years, when she looked from their broken kitchen table to him and said, "You know, we could ask for a new one if we got married."

Kyle laughed at first, because he thought she was kidding, but she gave him a look and he broke off abruptly. "You're serious?"

She shrugged. "You know how I hate shopping."

The next thing Kyle knew, he was addressing envelopes and sending out invitations.

As the wedding day approached, however, Ashley grew increasingly anxious. It seemed that they had no sooner selected a place that she decided she _had_ to get married in a church, and just as they found matching bridesmaid dresses, she decided she _had_ to wear white. Kyle was just glad her parents were so overjoyed he was 'finally making an honest woman of her' that they were paying for the entire thing, right down to the floral table centerpieces. They even let Kyle and Ashley stay at their house while the wedding drew closer, rather than make them stay in a hotel.

And then the day came, and guests arrived, and the band started playing, and they waited for Ashley to show up. And waited.

And kept waiting.

Kenny found a letter she had left behind and the guests began trying to discreetly slip away while Stan, Mr. and Mrs. Broflovski, Ike, Kenny, Ashley's parents, and Cartman clustered around Kyle, the former five making an effort to console him.

"A _convent?"_ Kyle cried, clutching the letter. "She left me at the alter to run away to a _convent?_"

"I just don't know why our baby girl would _do_ something like that," her mother said, dapping at her eyes with a handkerchief.

"She must have been feeling guilty about all that table-breaking Jew sex," Cartman said loudly. He'd helped himself to some wedding cake.

As Kyle was no longer welcome at her parent's home after Cartman's helpful suggestion, Stan took him down to the closest motel to get him situated in a room. The receptionist at the desk took one look at the two of them and asked, "Groom running away with the best man?"

"_What?_ No!" Kyle came out of his post-Ashley funk long enough to defend his heterosexuality. Stan, however, leaned forward curiously.

"How often does that happen?"

The receptionist shrugged, accepting his credit card and ringing him up for a room. ("With _two beds!_" Kyle said loudly.) "About as often as you'd expect."

--

After having two marriages fail before they even made it to the vows, Kyle had a few understandable issues with trust and commitment. He spent the next seven years in a string of relationships in which he was sure they were going to break up, and then acted surprised when his girlfriends got tired off his moping and did just that.

When even Kenny, the ultra-bachelor himself, got a stripper wife who'd come over from Polynesia and was desperate for a green card, Kyle and Stan decided to go up to Vegas and pretend they weren't single losers for a week. Kyle asked Stan on the car ride over why the hell wasn't he married, anyway?

"I mean, we all know why I can't keep a girl around," Kyle said, cranking up the AC while they drove through the desert. "But you're a good catch. You don't have some sort of physical deformity you've kept hidden from me, do you?"

"I promise, you've seen all my deformities," Stan said, snickering. "Ey, I dunno, man. I guess if I could even figure out what I _want_ in a woman..."

They checked into a theme hotel and then they went down to the bar and ordered hard liquor and discussed Kenny's wedding. At length Stan drained his glass and asked, smirking, who Kyle would invite if they got married.

"Ashley's parents," Kyle said promptly. "I want to see if they can possibly hate me anymore than they already do." He finished off his glass as well and flagged the bartender down for another round. "You?"

"Wendy," Stan said thoughtfully. "I'd like to rub it in that I was marrying someone with a nicer ass than hers."

Kyle took another swig. "Where would we have it?"

"Scotland."

"Scotland is the asshole of the world."

"It is not! We could go see that - what's it called - that rock."

"Oh, wow. A rock. Just how I want to spend my honeymoon. Maybe I could hump some trees while you make sweet love to your precious rock."

"Shut up. The Blarney Stone, I meant."

"That's in Ireland, Stan."

"It is?"

"Yes."

They ordered another round.

"So then it's Stonehenge I'm thinking of."

"That's in Wiltshire."

"Well then what sort of rocks does _Scotland_ have?" Stan demanded.

"The Scottish kind."

Stan grumbled and lifted his glass to his lips. "Who would conduct the ceremony?"

"Easy," Kyle said. "Elvis impersonator."

"What!"

"We're in Vegas, aren't we?"

"No way, you only get married once. Well, not _you_, but-"

"Hey, that's not fair! I never managed to actually _get_ married!"

"The point is, it should be something special. Everyone and their mother gets married by an Elvis impersonator."

"So, what? You want the real Elvis?"

"No. Ronald McDonald."

"What!" Kyle sputtered, spitting the sip he'd just taken back out.

"C'mon, it takes white trash weddings to a whole new level. And then the catering is all taken care of."

"That's stupid. White trash weddings are all about tradition. You have squirrel, not hamburgers."

"It's not stupider than an Elvis impersonator."

"Yes, it is!"

"Fine," Stan said. "We'll take shots to decide."

"Fine," Kyle agreed, flagging down the bartender again.

--

Several hours later, they stumbled out of a taxi and into a small chapel. They demanded a fat clown to marry them, then climbed back into the taxi and passed out before they made it back to the hotel. The taxi driver dropped them off at the curb in front, but not before helping herself to the fee and a generous tip from Kyle's wallet.

Kyle and Stan spent their honeymoon chugging aspirin by the bottle load and puking in the bathtub.

--

It was nearly a week before they were lucid enough to comprehend their present situation, and then they both promptly flipped out.

Stan tore through the hotel room for the necessary papers to get an annulment, and he had the phone to his ear and had dialed half the numbers when Kyle said, "Stan. Stan, wait."

He gave him a bemused look, his finger hovering over the buttons. "What?"

"Well," Kyle said. "I was thinking. Maybe we could just, you know. Not get an annulment."

Stan frowned, and then he put the phone down. "What, you mean _stay_ married?"

"Well," Kyle said. "Well, _yeah_."

Silence. And then Stan said, "That sounds kind of gay."

"Well, yeah," Kyle repeated, and then he started talking faster. "But, man, I'm thirty-five and I repel women like an aging Seth MacFarlane, and, okay, I'm not _forty_ yet but, seriously, I might as well be."

Stan was silent for a while longer. "... I'd get your health benefits if we were married, right?" he finally said. Stan had openly coveted Kyle's company's health benefits ever since they they were twenty-two.

"Um, yeah."

Stan mulled it over. "Yeah, all right then."

"Okay," Kyle said.

More silence.

"We've been married for about a week, right?" Stan asked.

"Yeah."

"Did we kiss at the alter?"

"... I don't think so," Kyle said, searching his admittedly spotty memory of the evening. He thought they'd been arguing about rocks, and then he remembered being pawed over by a Russian woman. But that was pretty much it.

"So we've been married for a week and we haven't even kissed," Stan summarized, glancing at Kyle. Kyle glanced back. "... that table. Um. Is that how you really broke it?"

"Yeah," he said.

"Oh." Pause. "Want to try it?"

So they had sex, which was awkward, because just last week they'd been happy heterosexual men with a happy heterosexual friendship pursuing disastrous heterosexual relationships. But doing it happily.

Also, the cleaning maid walked in halfway through, which certainly didn't ease the situation, what with the startled Spanish blasphemy and all.

Afterwards they rolled over and Stan said, "Well, that was weird." Kyle agreed, and they ordered Chinese food and watched the British comedy channel and Kyle declared England a lost cause.

--

"Hey, Dad."

"Kyle! Good to hear from you, son. How's Vegas?" his father asked on the other line. Kyle poured himself a cup of coffee.

"Vegas is fine," Kyle said, scratching his hip and stifling a yawn. "Actually, I'm calling because I need to tell you something."

"What is it?"

"I got married." He heard Gerald Broflovski snort.

"Yeah, right."

Kyle gaped at the phone. "It's true!"

"All right," Mr. Broflovski went on a tone that made it clear he was humoring his son, "to who?"

"Stan."

"Yes, yes, very funny," he said, and hung up.

Kyle put the phone back in the cradle and looked at Stan, who was lounging on one of the beds and watching a Japanese soap opera, because he was a nagaphile. Stan was the sort of person who lounged very well. Kyle was starting to appreciate that.

"They didn't believe me," he informed him.

"Maybe we should just show up one Thanksgiving with a kid."

Kyle snorted. "Yeah, right, Stan. If you want to shit out an ass baby, be my guest."

"Shut up," Stan said, chucking the remote at his head. "Hey, let's have sex again." Kyle gave him a wary look and Stan rolled his eyes. "I promise I won't throw up on you again."

"That's what you said last time," Kyle said skeptically.

"Oh, quit being a wuss and take your pants off," Stan said.

"Ah," Kyle said, and smirked a little. "Blissful matrimony."

--

End


End file.
